Dubai Aerospace Enterprise CEO on strategy, acquisitions

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai, is positioning itself as a top-tier global aircraft lessor through targeted acquisitions and expansion of its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations. CEO and board member Firoz Tarapore told attendees at the 82nd Annual General Meeting of the International Air Transport Association in Rio de Janeiro that DAE’s leasing business represents roughly 85% of the company, with a fleet of about 700 aircraft that will grow to in excess of 1,000 once the Macquarie AirFinance acquisition closes.

“DAE has two business lines: one is aircraft leasing, where we are a very large player, and the other one is airframe MRO, where we provide airframe heavy maintenance services,” Tarapore said. “The leasing business today is, I would say, about 85% of our business, and the engineering business is the remainder of that.”

Tarapore outlined how recent buyouts have reshaped DAE’s scale and market reach. The company acquired Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC) in 2025 and announced an agreement to acquire Macquarie AirFinance (MAF) in 2026, moves that push DAE into the upper echelons of global lessors. “On the leasing side, our fleet today is about 700 aircraft and, as you may have seen, we have announced an agreement to acquire Macquarie,” he said. “So, when that transaction closes, our fleet will be in excess of 1000 aircraft, allowing us to serve customers in like 80-85 countries.”

Tarapore said DAE is not preoccupied with ranking, but with having “the right number of aircraft to be relevant to our customers, to the OEMs, and to the suppliers.” He described a focused fleet strategy that deliberately targets specific product niches rather than attempting to cover the entire aircraft spectrum.

• Focused types: narrowbody plus one widebody from Boeing and Airbus each
• Special positions: ATR72-600 turboprops and factory-fresh Boeing 777 freighters
• Geographic reach after Macquarie deal: roughly 80–85 countries

“We do not work across the entire spectrum. In fact, we will focus on narrowbody and one widebody product from Boeing and Airbus each, and then two unique aircraft types,” Tarapore said. He stressed the financial rationale: “These are unique aircraft. The number of aircraft being made each year by the OEM is limited, and the number of lessors in this space is also limited, and when you put all those things together, that makes for a fairly unique financial proposition from a risk-reward perspective.”

Beyond leasing, DAE operates a significant MRO arm from Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan. Tarapore noted the engineering business operates independently and serves airlines across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. “We have hangar space for 25 aircraft at the same time, 25 parallel lines of heavy maintenance. That’s a big business,” he said, adding that the facility is “the fifth or the sixth largest single facility for airframe heavy maintenance in the world.”

On market dynamics, Tarapore pointed to constrained OEM and supply-chain output and persistent airline demand as drivers for stronger pricing and increased relevance of lessors. “There is a shortage of aircraft that haven’t been made for the last few years... customer demand has stayed relatively sticky,” he said. Looking farther ahead he argued leasing’s structural role will expand: “If you look out 20 years instead of five, the number of aircraft in the fleet that will be financed by lessors will be twice what it is now.”